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Cress Darnel
Crescent Moon "Cress" Darnel, also known as Cress Mira, is one of the main characters in the Lunar Chronicles. She is a skilled Lunar hacker and programmer, who formerly worked for Queen Levana and Sybil and is now working with Linh Cinder. History Cress was born in the year 109 T.E. to Sage Darnel and an unnamed mother as a shell, a Lunar incapable of bioelectrical manipulation. Due to shell infanticide laws enacted by Queen Channary, she was taken away from her family in order to be killed. Her father wanted to run away and bring her to Earth, but her mother was so devoted to the queen that she wanted nothing to do with Cress. Cress was therefore taken, but she was not killed—instead, she lived with other shells until she found that she was good at hacking. Eventually, she helped another shell named Julian contact his parents. However, instead of coming to get him, it is assumed that they called the authorities, and Julian was taken away, never to be seen again. Sybil noticed Cress's hacking ability and gave her special treatment. When asked to hack a communication link between a few European diplomats, Cress told Sybil that in order to do so, she needed to be closer to Earth, with better net connectivity and advanced software. A few months later, Cress was taken by Sybil to a satellite station that made one full orbit around Earth every sixteen hours, becoming Queen Levana's hacker and spy. For more than seven years, Cress was imprisoned in the satellite, alone to do the queen's bidding. Every three or four weeks, Sybil would visit her satellite in a podship to provide Cress with food and water, and to take blood samples via a hypodermic needle into Cress's arm. The netscreens in Cress's satellite were her only company, and all that screen time made Cress an excellent hacker. She was forced by her mistress to work as Queen Levana's programmer. For the last few years, she was ordered by Sybil to design countless spy systems for keeping watch on Earth's political systems, hacking the communication links between diplomats, and connecting feeds from Earth's political leaders to the queen's palace, including discussions, meetings, and document transfers. Recent Events In order to spy on Emperor Rikan of the Eastern Commonwealth outside of the netlinks, Cress was ordered to program a D-COMM chip for insertion into one of the royal androids. When Sybil stayed in New Beijing Palace to discuss relations between the Eastern Commonwealth and Luna, she inserted this chip into Prince Kai's personal android Nainsi, who had been researching rumors about Princess Selene. As a result, Levana got to know all the information Nainsi had found and used it to hunt down the princess. The transmission of data over the direct link through the D-COMM chip jammed up the bandwidth to the point that it caused Nainsi to malfunction. Prince Kai brought the broken android to Cinder, who later discovered the chip and removed it from the android. Realizing the consequences of her work, Cress initiated a direct link to Earth and connected with Cinder. She warned Cinder about Levana's intentions to marry Kai in order to take control over the Eastern Commonwealth and then use her army to wage war against the rest of Earth. When Cinder and Carswell Thorne escaped from New Beijing Prison, Cress immediately received orders from Queen Levana to track down Cinder. She was able to find the coordinates of the Rampion in which Cinder and Thorne were hiding and disrupted the signals of the ship to cloak the ship from detection. During this time, Sybil had ordered Cress to jam satellite signals in order to cloak Lunar ships from Earthen detection. Aboard those ships were the special operatives that were used to attack Earthens during the two-hour massacre on Earth that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. Also during this time, the information Cress had found about Thorne had made her fall in love with him. Cress believed that he was a "hero" due to what she had read. In truth, it was mostly a bunch of lies. Thorne realized that Cress liked him very much and he found it awkward for a while due to the fact she'd put him on a pedestal and he felt he didn't belong there. Later, Cress began to learn more and more about the real him and fell in love with him even more. Her father, however, did not approve of them and had told Thorne multiple times that she was too good for him. Characteristics Appearance Cress has "the longest, waviest, most unruly mess of tangled blonde hair imaginable." This is because of it not being cut since she was put in the satellite. Cress has "a sweet heart-shaped face, giant sky-blue eyes and a sprinkle of freckles across her nose." Her hair is later cut short by Thorne and was cut awkwardly, due to Thorne's blindness at the time, and was all different lengths at the time. However, Iko, in her new android body that Thorne got for her, was able to shape Cress's short hair around her face in pretty waves. In height Cress is 153.48 centimeters tall, making her the shortest of the group. Trivia *According to author Marissa Meyer, cress is a type of lettuce, just like rapunzel. *In a variation of Rapunzel the enchantress who keeps her locked up cuts her long hair and banishes her to the desert for trying to escape, her prince later finds the enchantress alone in the tower and falls. He survives but is blind from falling in thorns, he later finds Rapunzel in the same desert. Marissa Meyer probably referenced Cress and Throne's struggle in the desert after this and very likely named Thorne after the thorns that blinded the prince. *Another name for rapunzel lettuce is rampion. Fanarts Crescent Moon Darnel Portrait.jpg|Cress by © lostie815 Crescent Moon Darnel Full Body Shot.jpg|Cress by © lostie815 Blehhh.jpg|Cress, Cinder and Winter by © AbbiDaSquirrel Category:A to Z Category:Characters Category:Main characters Category:Viewpoint characters Category:Females Category:Humans Category:Lunars Category:Shells Category:Alive Category:Characters in Cinder Category:Characters in Cress